


i'll be the embrace that keeps you warm

by longtime_lurker



Category: Hockey RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Canadian Shack, First Time, Huddling For Warmth, Hurt/Comfort, Life-Affirming Sex, M/M, Near Death Experiences, Secretly A Virgin...Ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-14
Updated: 2015-04-14
Packaged: 2018-03-22 20:20:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3742357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/longtime_lurker/pseuds/longtime_lurker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It is like death, but it is not death; lovelier. / Cold, inconvenienced, late, what will you do now / with the gift of your left life?</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'll be the embrace that keeps you warm

**Author's Note:**

> omg how did this get so wordy, it's like three scenes long. /o\ tropey, iddy, shameless h/c dedicated to everyone who survived this hellish fucking winter. also to our [little wounded ice dancer](http://chicago.suntimes.com/blackhawks-hockey/7/71/498015/blackhawks-reign-depends-patrick-kane)'s poor collarbone.
> 
> backdrop setting is a (fictional) vaguely Shattuck-esque boarding school located aroundabouts where baby!PKane (canonically) played for the Knights back in the day...and where the age of consent is such that I didn't have to tag for it. nonetheless: warning for, you know, unenlightened teenage boys. see end notes for an additional content-related spoiler.

"Who wants to go skiing?" Jonny says, tromping into the main room of the cabin with said skis tucked under his arm.

Some of the guys - his bros from the hockey team, mostly - look up from their ongoing epic euchre-and-daydrinking tournament by the fireplace. Many are too caught up in their cards and associated trash-talk to even turn their heads in their vaunted captain's direction, and a couple are flat-out napping. 

But: "I'll come with," Kaner says immediately, abandoning his cards as he extricates himself with some difficulty from the comfy, squishy depths of the beanbag chair.

From across the circle, Sharpy laughs at him. "Ditching 'cause you're losing, eh, peekaboo?"

Kaner scowls back. "Fuck off. Just got a little cabin fever is all." He's already going for his coat, hat, gloves, bending down to fumble through the jumble of the equipment closet for a likely-looking pair of ski boots. "Be nice to get some fresh air."

"Try the red ones, they look like about your size," Jonny advises, reaching for another pair of poles. "Anyone else? C'mon, lazyasses."

"I guess the weather's supposed to be shitty," Duncs offers vaguely between sips of beer, which precious commodity he'd secured for the whole group last weekend in a massive booze run with Seabs, driving just over the border into Quebec, where the drinking age is a year lower than here in Ontario.

Jonny pulls out his phone to check the weather in question, but is foiled by the total lack of decent reception. Sharpy's parents' sickass vacation cabin is about as remote as you can get around here, way out in the big forests to the southwest of St. Catharines. It's part of the attraction of this whole winter-break trip of theirs: the total lack of supervision by dorm heads or parents (not to mention cops with their eyes peeled for underage drinking shenanigans) more than makes up for the patchy 3G and nonexistent wi-fi.

"We're _skiing,_ " Kaner dismisses. "A little snow's not a problem." 

Jonny rolls his eyes. Typical Kaner, all bravado just because he hails from what's gotta be the snowiest city in the US. He just came back from his family Christmas with a phoneful of pictures showing him posing with various sisters - all in puffy coats and furry boots and beanies, grinning the same grin that Jonny is eternally chagrined to find so adorable on Patrick's own face - next to a cool six feet of freshly fallen powder. Like that's some kind of achievement compared to living in fucking _Canada_ for nine months out of the year.

Accordingly, he puts in, sarcastic: "You'd know, Buffalo."

Kaner makes the very specific face back at him that means _the fuck is your idea of chirping, Toews?,_ but it melts right into that (yes, okay, adorable) grin as soon as Jonny whaps his ass with a ski pole.

"Later, couch potatoes," he yells to the tipsy crew slouched cozily at fireside, gets a couple of raised beer bottles - and middle fingers - in return, and then it's him and Kaner heading through the door, strapping on their skis, and zipping out into the empty white expanse of wilderness. 

-

Lazyasses aside, it's probably just as well how that shook out. Jonny's got some hockey shit to hash over with Kaner - strategy for the back half of their season, mostly, stuff he hasn't had the chance to bring up yet, not between the grind of finals followed by the holidays. And besides - unlike some of the guys who by senior year are already working on the beginnings of beer bellies - Kaner can actually keep up with him. Outpace him, even, as much as it annoys Jon to admit it. 

They go pretty hard - always do, when it's just the two of them - wending their way smoothly between the bare black trees as they race cross-country, as competitive here as they are on skates, calling out chirps back and forth. Once or twice Jon intentionally comes close to cutting Kaner off, swooping riskily in front of him and hooting as their skis nearly cross.

"Learn to drive, Tazer," Kaner yells at his back. Far from the first time Jonny's heard those words from his mouth, especially this time of year. Honestly, it's not even the first time this _weekend;_ that would be yesterday afternoon, when they went on a grocery run in the junker that Jonny shares with his brother. Patrick, as per usual, grabbed for the oh-shit handles every damn time Jonny braked or turned, snapping about how when conditions are this crappy you gotta fucking _cooperate_ with everyone else on the road, you can't be all aggressive and shit, _Tazer._

Jonny categorically refuses to accept that Pat might be a better winter driver than he is - who's the actual Canadian here? - but it can't be denied that so far Pat's logged zero accidents to Jonny's vehicle-totaling one. Then again, _Jonny's_ never gotten involved in any drunken cabbie-fighting incidents which he was lucky to escape without being arrested along with his equally dumb hick cousins…so there's that.

What he opts to call back is, "Aw, sorry your lil' legs can't keep up!" - and of course Kaner retaliates by kicking in the fucking nitrous, racing way ahead of Jonny before dropping back, insultingly deliberate, to let Jonny catch up. 

"Little?" he hollers, once they're within shouting distance of each other again. "I think you mean, more aerodynamic."

Privately, Jonny more or less concedes the point. They're both conditioned within an inch of their lives, but Jonny is bigger, heavier, which is an obvious plus in hockey but evidently a minus on skis; Kaner is lighter, fleeter of foot, and moreover those clever mitts of his can handle ski poles like nobody's business. 

Publicly, his response is more along the lines of: "I guess that's one word for it, pocketsize."

Kaner just gives him that sardonic, amused look that he likes to use whenever bigger dudes try and start shit on the ice - all fake-passive _who me, butter wouldn't melt in my mouth_ \- and then he jets it once again, peeling far away from Jonny, until he's just a little towheaded dot all but lost on the horizon. 

Jonny grits his teeth and wills an extra couple levels of power into his own thigh muscles to follow.

He…look, not to sound like a douchebag, but he'd pretty much never had a worthy rival in all his life until Kaner. The two of them started at St. Catharines the same year: Jonny fresh off a 1500-kilometer inter-province family move, Kaner just shipped right over the border every semester for school while his folks stayed behind in his hometown. They'd both always been far and away the best on their respective youth teams, were both immediately snapped up by the notorious Coach Q for the Upper School's beyond-prestigious prep hockey program, and at first they'd just circled each other warily, sizing one another up, every interaction edged with oneupmanship, first at the rink and then away from it also.

Jonny's not gonna lie: he'd thought Kaner was nothing but trouble, at first. The kid was like two steps up from white trash, to begin with, and basically all of his opinions were the sort of stupid shit that you'd expect from an American - Jonny used to wince preemptively every time he opened his mouth in civics, or history, or social studies. He hadn't hit his growth spurt yet and tried to make up for it with the worst kind of arrogant swagger, and it didn't help that girls tended to like him, somehow thought he was cute despite his epic lack of game (which, okay, whatever, Jonny could kind of see where they were coming from on that one: the curls, the eyes, the smile). Back home he apparently drove some ridiculous Hummer from his dad's car dealership that he liked to show off in phone photos whenever possible, like the dictionary definition of overcompensating, and by tenth grade he already had a reputation as a hard partier, which in Jonny's opinion was just not compatible with being serious about your training, your regimen - ultimately, your _game._

But unfortunately for that theory, Jonny pretty much immediately fell hard in love with Pat's hockey. In all his years playing he'd never seen anything quite like it, how Pat used his size like a fucking _advantage_ out there, not the liability it should be in a contact sport; he almost never got crushed into the boards like it seemed he ought to, twisting like smoke around d-men with a couple dozen pounds on him, plus he had these baby-soft hands that could do things with a hockey stick that blew Jonny away. And then, maybe inevitably, somewhere in there - 

(between their regular screaming fights on the bench, and invariably getting stuck rooming together on team roadtrips every other weekend, and sweating it out in the weight room trying to add muscle to their lean adolescent frames, and struggling to keep their grades high enough for athletic eligibility - Jonny, a native speaker, attempts in vain to tutor Kaner's hopeless French into something resembling a passing grade; Kaner, on the other hand, is significantly superior at math, which Jonny really hadn't expected, at least not until he discovered what a nerd Kaner was about sports stats)

\- somewhere in there Jon started to get to know him, got to see the hard work behind the flashiness, the exertion that went into those seemingly effortless showy moves. Watched Patrick refine his precision puck control and insane stickhandling with hours and hours of practice, over and over and _over_ until he got it how he wanted. Came to realize that despite his moronic behavior off (and, occasionally, on) the ice, Pat is as driven as Jon himself, in his own way. Jon thinks, sometimes, that Patrick might have it in him to go all the way, make it to the show - just like Jon wants more than anything, everything he's ever worked towards.

So yeah, that was how he got sucked in, and from there it was just a matter of time: before Jonny knew it, they were bonding or whatever. Like he looked up one day and boom, Kaner had somehow wormed his way into this fond little spot way deep down in Jon's chest…and vice versa, Jon's pretty sure. Just a couple nights ago the two of them sat up round the fireplace, buzzed and toasting marshmallows, just talking, long after everyone else had passed out in bunks and sleeping bags all over the cabin. Pat was talking about his family (he likes to do that a lot, an unexpected sweet streak) and how they'd only been able to afford to send him to St. Catharines in the first place because his beloved grandpa had died and left what money he had to further Pat's budding hockey career. Pat got all misted up talking about him - this kid Jonny's seen in every conceivable stage of cocky bullshit fronting - and he didn't even seem embarrassed about it.

Jonny's best buddy TJ is always giving him shit about his quote-unquote 'bro crush' on Kaner. "Eyefuck him harder, Toews," he'd teased at practice the week before school let out, sly grin and leaning over the bench where Jonny was intently watching Kaner deke and dangle like the absolute beauty he is. Which is some bullshit, because Jonny doesn't want to _bang_ the dude, okay; TJ knows perfectly well that Jonny's been gunning all semester for this cutie named Lindsey in the figure-skating program, anyways. 

No, Jonny just wants to _beat_ him.

-

Jon has caught up (or maybe Kaner just allowed him to…again) by the time they crest the next little ridge - and suddenly spread out below them, just a gentle clear slope away, is a pretty little pond frosted over with pale ice.

"Oh, shit!" Pat says, delighted. "Get your skis off, Tazer, let's go slide around some."

He's already fiddling with his boot bindings, but Jonny hesitates, unsure. What he can see of the snow-covered ice looks clear and blue, which any shinny-playing kid from Winnipeg knows indicates safe thickness. Still, though: "I dunno about that," he says, on principle. They're a long way from anywhere, and now he _really_ can't get a reliable signal on his phone.

Patrick, paying him zero mind, is already heading right out there. He's whooping - one of his signature dumb celly phrases, probably - as he wheels round in a move that's somewhere between his gorgeous spin-o-ramas and fucking terrible dancing. 

Despite himself Jonny can feel the fond little smile twitching at the corners of his mouth; he knows better than anyone how Pat loves the ice, itches to get back on it, misses it after even a couple of days…days of _vacation,_ even. He's never been around for one of Pat's summers in Buffalo, obviously, but from what he hears Pat always goes a little crazy then - like he doesn't know what to do with himself, without hockey, besides get into trouble chasing girls and trying to get his underage hands on alcohol.

"Pussy," Kaner hollers to him now, a gleeful taunt on the wind. "C'mon out, come on. Look, it's holding me just fine."

"Well, sure, you're tiny enough," Jonny calls back, but he starts taking his own skis off anyway. It's too cold out here to want to sit still for long; the sweat ringing his hairline is already growing chilly.

Kaner's found a broken bough that roughly approximates the size and shape of a hockey stick, and is now happily absorbed in whacking a rock around the ice with it. "Yeah, on second thought maybe you better keep that thick ass off it, eh?"

Jonny bares his teeth and lunges for him, only just avoiding falling on said thick ass, thighs flexing hard to try and compensate for the foreign-feeling balance of ski boots rather than skate blades. Patrick is laughing as Jonny circles up, caging him in long enough to steal his branch-stick and whip the rock-puck off in the other direction.

They're so caught up in messing around out there that Jonny doesn't notice anything amiss until Kaner whiffs on an attempted pass and in response to Jonny's heckling says, "Eh, fuck off, the light is going." 

Jonny glances up at the wide bowl of the sky over the trees, and starts a little. It's still only early afternoon - today everyone straggled awake by mid-morning, and he and Kaner have only been out for a couple hours at most - but it's already darkening, way sooner than it should be, even this close to the winter solstice. A great gray bank of clouds is massing on what Jonny thinks is the northern horizon - he can't be sure, being as the sun's gone - and that can only mean one thing: snowstorm.

"Looks like some weather coming in," he says belatedly. "Maybe we should get a move on."

Pat doesn't hear him. He's off racing the perimeter now, recklessly fast, showing off; he likes to do that, likes to make a scene, especially when Jonny's around.

The wind's kicked up, shifting drifts over the ice, and Jonny's stomach lurches a little as the snowcover blows away to reveal some dubious-looking patches of grayish-white ice, mottled and uneven in texture.

He raises his voice. "Kaner, c'mon." It comes out harsher, tighter than he was going for. That storm looks like it's rolling in _fast._ Should've listened to Duncs after all, shit. "Seriously, it's gonna suck if we have to ski back through a fucking blizzard. Let's _go."_

"Oh fine, fine." Kaner swoops back in towards him, sticking his tongue out. "Calm your tits, bro, I'm comi-"

There's a sound like a gunshot, insanely loud and sharp in the still cold air, and Jonny's heart stops, because he knows what that means. The ice is groaning, creaking, splintering, right by the near shoreline where Patrick is, hairline fractures racing along its unstable surface before widening into yawing darkness. 

Clear as day, Jonny sees Patrick mouth: _FUCK!_

He hears himself shouting, voice cracking on Kaner's name, his first name, like Jonny hardly ever calls him out loud.

He's running towards the ice even as it breaks up completely and Kaner goes down, a sudden panicked flail of movements for a handful of seconds, and then nothing but black water.

Rationally Jonny knows that if he dashes headlong out there, he'll just go in as well, but he can hardly keep his legs from doing it anyway. He wavers right on the edge, so chilled and paralyzed by stunned horror that for a nonsensical moment he imagines that he too is plunging through the ice, freezing, drowning.

He has less than no time to act, has to trust to intuition, like he would in what he used to think of as dire situations - down two goals in the third of a big game, say. Some stupid shit like that, utterly meaningless in the face of his friend floundering before him, struggling to keep his head above that killing water.

 _Do or die,_ they like to throw around the phrase in the room, like the idiot kids they are, with no idea of what it really means, to be actually down to do…or die.

Growing up on Manitoba pond hockey, Jon got all the usual lectures, and theoretically he knows what to do here, how it's supposed to work. He grabs for one of their abandoned ski poles and goes down flat on his belly, wriggling snakelike out onto the most solid-looking surface left along the shoreline, keeping his knees anchored in the terrain. 

He clutches the pole in both hands and stretches it out along the treacherous rotten edge of the ice, inching the point of it over to where Patrick's blond head is bobbing up and down as his thrashing grows progressively weaker, body surely going into shock already from the bitter cold. His face is intermittently visible, dead white, and that flat affectless little voice that sometimes pipes up in the back of Jonny's brain is saying: _he's dying, you are seeing him die, right now._

The totality of Patrick's spirit and skill, on the ice and off it - his lame chirping and that big smile that sometimes breaks out over his whole face, the way he talks all kinds of shit about the girls he's supposedly banged but tries so hard to be polite to people's moms, every bad and good and dumb and beautiful thing about him, vanishing forever into that black, freezing water -

 _No,_ Jonny says to the thought of losing that; in his head or out loud, it doesn't matter. 

"KANER," he barks out in his very best Captain voice, and shoves the pole further forward, heedless of how it makes his arms drag through the freezing water welling up atop the half-shattered ice. "THE TIP, MOTHERFUCKING GRAB IT." 

One of Patrick's ski gloves pops up, a feeble extension that just catches the end of the pole, and unbelievably, the faintest of "that's what he said"s drifts back over the churning of ice chunks and water.

Jonny's laugh comes out more like a sob. 

"Both hands, use both hands," he instructs. Then, as Patrick's ghostly features try and fail to twist into a smirk, "I know, I know, that's what he - Peeks, _hurry -"_

The pole's not long enough for Patrick's numbed hands and arms to reach and grip on for real, and Jonny has no choice but to slither out farther, just his ski boots left hooked into solid ground, belly-down and trying to starfish his limbs as much as possible to spread out his weight - their stupid joking earlier wasn't wrong; if this ice was too weak for Pat's bulk, it certainly won't support Jon's for very long, either.

"Hang on," he says, voice threatening to break again, and he can't even tell if he's commanding Pat or the ice itself: to keep itself together, just for a moment, just long enough for Jonny to haul his precious burden safely to shore. "Hold on, hold on."

Pat clings and Jonny heaves, putting more power into his arms and shoulders than he can ever remember doing in any workout or practice - and then he's got the incredible reward of Patrick's dear pale face emerging from the dark void under the ice, features wracked as he coughs up water, but not dead, not dead - 

then two limbs - four - crawling clumsily, like a broken puppet, up onto a big heavy floe that stays together just long enough for Jonny to hoist him out, scrabbling frantically backwards as the ice creaks and groans horribly all the while, threatening to disintegrate further, more collapsing inwards in the wake of Patrick's dragged weight. 

Jonny gets his own feet planted on the solid ground of the shore, Pat close enough to the shallows now for Jonny to toss the ski pole aside and finish the job with just his body. The last pull is so hard that he and Pat tumble back together onto the snow-crusted bank in a floundering tangle of sodden ski gear.

Jonny gathers him up, both of them shaking: himself from adrenaline and Patrick from what's gotta be imminent hypothermia.

"You fucking _dumbass,_ " he says fervently, staring desperately down into Pat's glazed eyes, at that face he could almost kiss right now just for still being here with him, right here, right now, for not being lost and gone forever underneath that black ice like he almost was, so easily could've been. 

But he doesn't have time to spare for getting all sentimental, here. Patrick is waterlogged and freezing, shivering so violently he can hardly speak, and his exposed skin is already turning an ominous corpse-pale. Especially his - "oh my god," Jonny says involuntarily, "where are your _boots?"_

"Had to - undo 'em, in the water, kick 'em off." Patrick's teeth are chattering so hard that Jonny has trouble parsing the syllables. "So they wouldn't drag me down," and Jonny remembers him thrashing and struggling underwater, how long it'd taken before his head had come back up the first time. 

He wraps one gloved hand uselessly around Pat's poor bare feet, looking half dead already. His mind is racing. Calling for help is right out - since they left the cabin his phone hasn't had a single bar of service, and of course Pat's is ruined from the water. That's a winter storm coming up for sure, biting wind and blowing flurries; there's no fucking way Pat can ski the hour or two back to the cabin in those wet clothes, through a snowstorm. He can barely even stand up straight on his own right now - and it's not like Jonny's in great shape himself, either. His arms are wet up past the elbows, the rest of his gear almost as damp from lying bodily on the snow-covered ice, and now Pat's dripping even more frigid water all over him as he sags against Jonny, shivering wet from head to toe. If they get stuck out here in the open during a blizzard - well, next semester the team's gonna be down a first-line center and right wing, let's put it that way.

Jonny stabs uselessly at his phone again, staring around, wild-eyed. 

To the west, something catches his gaze: far away, from here it's just a little dark blob between the trees, but what grabs him is how the shape's sort of squared off at the edges. Like - like something man-made, not natural.

"This way, buddy," Jon urges, half steering and half dragging Kaner in that direction, like he does when Kaner's too drunk to walk in a straight line but not quite too drunk to walk upright period; and he hopes and hopes that he wasn't wrong, that it won't be too late.

-

The single longest-feeling trek of Jonny's life is punctuated by the fragile cadence of Patrick's too-shallow breathing where he's slumped into Jonny's shoulder. 

"Are we there yet?" Pat asks for the third time, voice cracking, head tossing restlessly like he's feverish. By now he's so badly off that his body has even stopped shivering. If Jonny remembers his stages of hypothermia correctly, that is…not great.

"Almost, almost," he answers, praying that it's not a lie. "Hang in there, man." 

What if they're heading towards nothing, he thinks again, what if he's seeing things and it's just a funny-shaped bush or something that he's making a beeline for, what if there's nothing for it but to press on and on and on through the snowy forest as Patrick's sweet singular life leaks away right there against his chest -

Less than a hundred meters out, Pat falters completely, staggering, too stiff and numb to keep going.

"Can't feel my hands," he's muttering, head drooping. "Need 'em for hockey, Jon."

"Your _hands,_ shit," Jonny says blankly, "what about your _feet?"_

"What feet?" Patrick mumbles.

Jonny swears. "Hold on," he warns, bringing his arms around. If need be, he'll go with the fireman's carry, but he can probably just -

"Gonna carry me over the threshold?" Kaner breathes, and Jonny looks down to see him almost manage a smile. It makes his heart clench.

"You're tiny enough," he chirps again, weakly. Height aside, Kaner is actually a pretty solid chunk of muscle - has to be, to play on any team Jon captains and, even more so, any line Jon centers. Jon's very big on spending every possible moment of spare time working out. But cradled bridal-style in Jonny's arms like this, he really does look small. 

"One-fifty soaking wet," Kaner cracks back, even more faintly, and Jonny bites down on another of those laughs that's actually more like crying.

They've finally come close enough for the rectangular shadow to resolve itself into what looks like an abandoned hunting blind, one of those permanent ground-level ones like a little prefab hut, and Jonny goes nearly as limp as Kaner, it feels like, with gratitude. The wind is really starting to kick up out here.

"My hero," Kaner slurs. His girl-long eyelashes flutter in a drowsy parody of flirtation, or - 

"Nope, nuh-uh, no passing out," Jonny says sharply, jostling him a little back towards wakefulness, just in case. Slipping into unconsciousness is like the worst thing you can do when it comes to hypothermia, he's pretty sure. "Hey, stay with me, Peeks, we're not outta the woods yet."

"Mm, literally." Kaner waves a less-than-steady hand at the unbroken stretches of forest that surround the little shack in all directions, trying for another crooked sliver of smile.

The place is tumbledown as fuck, clearly unused in years, but it's four walls and a roof to get Pat inside, at least, out of the open. And they duck inside just in time, it feels like: Jonny's sinking to his knees to set Kaner gently down in the corner when the first blasts of sideways-blowing snow bang the still-swinging door wide open, like the storm's some vicious living creature trying to chase them in. 

Jonny straightens back up, goes and kicks it shut again. The opposing pressure of the wind is considerable, but the door does have a crude latch and he slides it fast. Not like that'll keep out the punishing windchill creeping in between the boards. 

He turns back around and is immediately drawn in to Patrick's prone form, like there's a magnet tugging painfully on all the tender parts of him. Uncertainly he hovers a body's span away, closer than he would with anyone except family or a girl. "How you doing, Peeks?"

"Tired. Wanna sleep." Pat's face is as white as the snow itself, enunciation shot, and when Jonny reaches for his wrist, yanking off a wet glove and pushing up a wet sleeve to get there, he finds a pulse that's pitifully slow.

"Hey, stay with me," he says again, casting his eyes uselessly around them. "We just gotta get you warmed up -"

But that's not gonna happen on its own, it's not like they're indoors for real, someplace insulated like the vacation cabin. Not like they can build a fucking fire or something. Outside the wind is roaring louder every minute, whistling viciously through every crack in the walls, the cold already brutal and only getting worse. 

Inside, Patrick's growing less lucid by the second, words almost too low and garbled to make out now. It's all Jonny can do to keep him talking, keep him engaged, and a lot of it isn't even coherent. One minute it's disjointed babble about some homework they've got due over break; next it's a delirious half-conversation that, Jonny is horrified to realize, seems to be addressed to Pat's late grandfather.

He's shivering himself, now, starting to feel that cold right down to the bone, and all he can think is that this is unacceptable: there's no fucking way he clawed his friend out of that gaping black maw in the ice, the watery abyss underneath, only to let him slip away like this -

There's a plank shelf built into the opposite wall of the tiny room, piled with random old junk left by hunters past. Broken beer bottles that have clearly been used for target practice, empty tubes of sunscreen and bug spray, a couple of busted flashlights, and - Jonny's eyes zero in, like it's some glowing prize in a video game, on what looks like a motheaten old army blanket coiled up bedroll-style.

"That's it," he says, scrambling for it in the same breath, because there it is: that's what'll make the difference between life and death, here. Just that and a little bit of shared -

body heat. Which is gonna be supplied…by Jonny. Right. 

No matter how the guys at school might joke about him hailing from the northern wastes or whatever, Jon's not really much of a mountain man. Sure, he'll spend a warm summer afternoon on the lake or whatever, but he's gonna want a shower and a decent dinner after, and he vastly prefers a nice civilized day on the golf course to roughing it in some backcountry tent. But a couple years back he did take this wilderness survival module for a PE credit, and last semester he read _Into Thin Air_ in some English class, and he recalls enough of both to understand that Kaner's soaked-through, frozen-solid clothes are a no-go here.

He shakes the blanket out flat on the floor in the corner furthest (so, like four feet away) from the door, looking down at the expanse of navy blue wool, thick and - more importantly, _dry._

"Kaner," he says, turning back, already steeling himself against the inevitable awkwardness. 

No response. He says, a little louder, "Patrick," and Pat's eyelids flicker.

Jonny tugs demonstratively at the front of Patrick's ski jacket. "Gotta get you out of all this wet shit, man."

Pat's too out of it to really help with undressing, normally-agile fingers stiff with cold, so Jonny guesses that's also up to him. He's never actually taken another person's clothes all the way off before. He'd hoped his first time with that would go down in a much sexier context than this, but it is what it is. They're teammates, Jonny's seen Kaner naked in vague peripheral vision a thousand times in the showers and all. It's whatever.

He gets Patrick down to his base layer of Under Armour, takes a quick fortifying breath and then starts peeling him out of that too, slow going to slip his fingers in tight between drenched spandex and skin, Pat squirming weakly beneath him as Jonny works the leggings down his calves, one leg at a time. It's surreal how suddenly Kaner's pale body as it emerges from the sodden black compression fabric is somehow the best thing Jon's ever seen - because it's twitching, moving, still alive. 

"You're good, man," he says under his breath, as much for his own benefit as Pat's, probably. "Gonna be alright," and starts in on his own clothing.

He'd been hoping to at least preserve the minimal barrier of his own long johns, but that's no good either: like all their clothing, they're practically starched with frost by now, from the icewater dousing and lengthy underdressed trek exposed to the elements. Even just keeping them on is making Jonny feel colder, and Patrick whines pitifully when Jonny moves in close enough that the wet fabric brushes against Pat's skin. He's clearly too out of it to really register the whole mutual nudity, forced proximity thing, so at least there's that.

Jonny tells himself to man up and get the fuck over himself. Then he bites the bullet and strips off that final layer as well, flings it aside to join the sopping pile of discarded clothing. Exposing his skin to the freezing air feels almost more miserable than the wet clothes had, if that's possible.

Patrick makes another weak noise, and holy shit, is he actually _reaching_ for Jonny? He must be pretty far gone.

"Shh, shh, yeah, okay," Jonny mumbles back, and pulls him down onto the blanket, naked as the day they were born.

The wool is rough and thick, itchy on their bare skin, but who gives a fuck, it's insulation. Jon hauls the ends in to cover them, managing to sort of wrangle a fold of blanket partway in between them - belly to mid-thigh, just the like…incriminating parts.

Not that he's remotely worried about anything happening down there, not right now - not even if one or both of them were into more than just girls (and occasionally, very very occasionally, Jonny has wondered). They both essentially just took one hell of a cold shower; Jonny's balls are drawn up as tight as if he's just about to shoot off, and Kaner's have to feel even worse.

\- Okay, no, not thinking about anyone's junk here, or shooting off, any of that. Jon gives himself another firm mental shake and nudges Pat gently onto his side, wraps his arms around him from behind and settles in against his body for real. 

"Sure, make me the little spoon," Patrick slurs.

He's…oh, he's starting to shiver again. That's actually a promising sign: means he's inching away from the really dangerous degree of frostbite, the kind where you lose your toes and shit. Still, Jonny's got to feel like a fucking furnace to him - and sure enough, soon as Jonny gets his chest pressed up fully against Pat's shoulderblades, Pat arches back into it and gives this long sigh like Jon's heard after triple OT or last-minute paper-writing all-nighters: beyond exhausted. 

"Nuh-uh, gotta stay up for me a little while, Peeks," Jonny says, shaking Pat's shoulder. He has to keep Pat talking, he thinks fuzzily, but under the circumstances it's not exactly easy trying to make light conversation. "Till I know - till we're sure you're good. Yeah?"

"Fuck off," Kaner mumbles crankily. "I'm _sleepy._ "

"No you aren't, you're fucking hypothermic," Jon snaps back. His hand moves automatically to give Kaner's curls a sharp tug, but halfway there it stutters to a halt and what it ends up doing instead is more like a caress, stroking and soothing. "Stay the hell a _wake,_ " and lo and behold, at the touch to his hair, Patrick quiets.

Gingerly Jonny shifts his limbs to cocoon him as thoroughly as possible under the protective covering of the blanket. 

"Okay," he says, "ultimate NHL fantasy lineup of all time, go."

If he knows Kaner at all, he'd have to actually be dead before he wouldn't bite on that one. Sure enough, Pat's lengthy response might be rambling and unfocused but it works to draw him in, keep him with Jonny for that much longer, and as the minutes tick by Jon has the incredibly strange experience of feeling it right through Pat's back as Pat's heartbeat gradually picks up within the clinch of his arms.

He tightens his grip around the solid column of Pat's waist and asks him about his top three favorite games (played, personally) of all time. This time Kaner's answer is stronger and clearer, more animated and detailed - practically play-by-play at points, in fact. God, the kid loves to talk hockey, Jonny loves that about him.

Pat's skin still feels a good ten degrees cooler than his own - and Jon wasn't exactly toasty to begin with, either - so he turns next to top three favorite games (watched, professional) of all time. Kaner takes him up on that one, too, and it's such an arrestingly normal conversation between the two of them that Jonny can almost forget the desperate weirdness of the situation, close his eyes and pretend it's just one of their sleepy exchanges across a darkened motel room as they both slowly sink deeper toward sleep in their respective beds.

Except, uh oh. "No, hey, c'mon," he warns, jostling Patrick again. "Wakey wakey." 

Kaner grumbles. One of his hands comes up to clutch at Jonny's wrist, so feebly that Jonny can't tell if Pat means to shove him away or draw him in closer. His fingertips are still an alarming shade of lavender, and his toes way down under the blanket must be even worse.

Jonny knows you're not supposed to rub too hard at cold-affected tissues, but surely gentle touch can only help with getting circulation going again or whatever, and so he reaches around to chafe softly at Patrick's fingers with his own as they drowsily discuss current plus-minuses on their own squad, kneads his own feet against Pat's toes as they predict Stanley Cup playoff seeding. Tries very hard not to think of the above as anything remotely resembling handholding or footsie - which is made easier by Kaner's intermittent grunts of unmistakable pain as, Jonny gathers, sensation starts to return to his extremities, slow and agonizing.

"Ah, fuck, that burns," he curses, interrupting an exchange re: Coach Q's line blender this month as his muscles spasm. It looks uncomfortable enough that Jonny refrains from saying anything about how the jerk of Patrick's whole pelvic region is making him grind back up on Jonny in a way that could potentially be dangerous after all, if Jonny's junk decides it's warm enough now to perk up.

"That's a good thing," he reminds Pat hopefully, instead. "Getting the feeling back, yeah?"

Kaner just makes this gritty, unhappy sound through his teeth in response. Buffalo-born or not, he always seems to run significantly colder than Jonny does, layering his little body up big while Jon's walking around shirtless or whatever…so pretty much the worst possible person to suffer a prolonged icewater dunking. Another particularly pathetic noise makes Jonny's chest twinge with sympathy, and he reaches up, exhales hot into his own cupped hands and then curves them around the sensitive shells of Patrick's ears. 

Rewarded by a muffled but positive-sounding _mm,_ he does it again, this time smoothing his palms over the bridge of Pat's nose; noses get frostbitten really easily. To distract from that one, he has to resort to asking after Pat's sisters back home. Jonny gives exactly zero shits about Jacqueline's cheer tryouts or Jessica's home-haircolor disaster, but that doesn't matter: the important part is how Patrick's skin is slowly but surely heating against his.

He must've forgotten that he himself has had one hell of a draining day, because he lets himself be lulled by Patrick's spacey mumbling about Erica's douchey boyfriend-of-the-week or whatever. "Eyes open," he remembers murmuring at some point, poking insistently at Pat's temple until Pat's eyes flutter softly back to half-mast - heavy-lidded and languorous, drooping lashes casting shadows along his cheekbones.

And then Jon doesn't remember much of anything else, not beyond pressing his forehead against the goosebumped nape of Patrick's neck and drifting off entirely by accident, face buried in the skin there, lips brushing soft against the top knob of Patrick's spine.

-

He bolts upright an unspecified length of time later from a nightmare of waking only to find Patrick blue and still and cold in his arms.

Instead his movement rouses the real Patrick, warm and pink and wriggling like a perfect motherfucking miracle right beside him, and when Pat rolls onto his back, blinking up at Jonny and asking groggily, "what -?" the relief is so pure that just for a second in there Jon has the insane impulse to lean their foreheads together and pat him on the ass as if Kaner'd just scored a particularly clutch goal: _Yeah, baby, way to stay alive!_

He stays his hand, obviously. Nothing wrong with throwing a nice enthusiastic butt tap in a guy's direction out on the ice, but Jonny suspects it'd be an entirely different matter minus the gloves and padding and, in fact, clothing of any kind.

"Is - 's night?" Patrick's asking, still kinda fuzzy. 

Jonny raises his head, glancing around. Looks like it from the dimness, but - "Could just be the weather," he says.

"Sounds like that's done with," Patrick mumbles, which - is true, now that Jon stops and pays attention. The quiet all around them is somehow almost louder than the howling wind from earlier.

Jonny twists out of their blanket nest, ignoring the way his skin pimples immediately with cold, peering out between the shitty slats through the narrow - vision slit, or whatever. Sure enough, the storm is over, leaving an unbroken expanse of white, glittering under a nearly full moon; out here, so far from the light pollution of the cities, it stands out with astonishing sharpness against the inky blue-black of the sky.

"Jesus fuck, come _back,"_ Pat hisses irritably. When Jonny turns again, the moonlight limns Pat's crossed arms and drawn-up knees, his pissy expression. There's nothing for it but to retreat into the huddle of skin-warmed wool - that's gotta be a good, what, eighty-some degrees above the ambient temperature in here? - and when Jonny does, it's absurdly comforting on the most basic primal level he's ever experienced outside of like, extreme fatigue, and hunger, and…well. Sex stuff.

"Better," Pat is saying on a long, pleased-sounding breath. 

Jonny silently agrees.

"Where's my -" Pat gets a bit squirmy, for a second, checking all around his immediate vicinity. "- oh, musta got nuked in the lake, eh." 

"Huh?" 

"My phone, Jon," Kaner says, patient. "Yours good? You wanna check it?" 

Jonny'd extricated his phone from his wet jeans pocket on autopilot, set it aside on an empty ammo box, but otherwise forgotten about it completely. "Signal's shit," he explains ruefully. "Otherwise we woulda had you…med-evac'd, or something, hours ago."

"Should still be good for time," Kaner says.

He's right - Jon's phone informs them that time has in fact moved on. Several hours more than Jon would've predicted, actually; it's way late. Or, if you prefer, way early.

"Can't take off till it's light," Patrick says. He's peering over Jonny's shoulder to look at the screen, too, which has him all pressed up along Jonny's spine in a pleasantly warm yet deeply discomfiting way. 

"Gotta wait for our stuff to dry, anyway," Jonny points out. 

"For sure," Pat agrees. "Gonna freeze to death all over again otherwise."

Jonny glances at the combined heap of their discarded clothing a couple of feet away, his and Kaner's things all tangled together, which for some reason makes him flush so fiercely that he has to cover by bending his head down over his phone again. The battery's almost out of charge, great.

He types out a mass text to everyone back at the cabin - _kaner &me ok back in the am_ \- and presses send. "Texting the guys," he explains when he feels Pat's neck craning up curiously again. "Just hoping one of 'em'll go through."

Patrick groans, suddenly. "Fuck, do you think they've called your folks or anything?"

"I fucking hope not," Jonny says, heartfelt. "Not yet."

Patrick groans again, slumping back and throwing one forearm over his eyes. "Oh my god, I'm gonna be grounded stateside for _ever."_

"Fucking hope not," Jonny repeats automatically, and Pat drops his arm to give him a small smile.

"Set your alarm?" he says. "I know it's still dark, but - we better get going first thing, huh?"

"My phone might die before then," Jonny admits, making a face. "Anyway, I don't think I can sleep any more."

"Mm." Kaner cracks his neck, wincing like the lack of pillows didn't agree with him. "Same."

He's looking all around, far more alert to their surroundings now than he was when Jonny originally dragged him in here. Being Kaner, the first thing he does is to reach over and pick up an empty handle of whiskey abandoned by the door, holding it up between his thumb and forefinger, laughing. 

"Bummer they didn't leave any," he says, "sure could use it right now," and just like that Jonny's imagining it, wholly involuntary: the two of them in here, like this, gone all loose with liquor and so much bare, hot skin pressed together - 

oh boy, not the right mental road to go down when they're this close, that's for sure. Jonny tries to shift away a little, real subtle so Kaner won't notice he's doing it.

"Even if they had," he points out, "bad idea, moron. It'd just fuck up your core temp again."

"My core temp is just fine," Kaner sniffs, like just a few short hours ago he wasn't near-catatonic in Jonny's arms, too cold to even shiver.

 _I did that,_ Jonny thinks with a crazy jolt of emotion. 

What he says out loud instead is: "Yeah, _now_ it is."

It's just sparring for the sake of it, like he always does with Kaner, and he doesn't expect Patrick to lift a hand, turning to grip at Jonny's shoulder and say, abruptly serious: "Yeah, hey. Thanks for that."

He's half rolled over to face Jonny, movement dislodging the single fold of blanket that was the only thing nominally protecting anyone's modesty here, and Jonny's breath draws in at the unexpected heat of Kaner's naked flank pressing against his own. 

"No problem," is all he can think to say, the automatic courtesy coming out hoarse. "Glad you decided to stick around."

"Oh, like I'd leave you alone on that line of ours."

Jonny snorts. He and Kaner frequently commiserate in private about the left winger who usually joins them on the first line, a big-talking junior prone to taking dumb penalties at the worst possible moments. "Appreciate it."

"Yeah, see, I actually did _you_ a favor, here." Kaner's tone is joking but there's a strange edge to it, and he's looking at Jonny with eyes gone all big and grey and solemn, an expression that doesn't match his standard attempt at playing it off light. He's got one arm slung up over his head, and for some reason Jonny's eyes have to skitter away from the sweat-matted reddish curls lining the hollow of his underarm.

He's intensely conscious of their mutual nudity in a way he hasn't been since first stripping them both down earlier. Then, he'd been too freaked out about Pat's condition to really spare the attention to care about that part. Now, it's so much worse, because Pat is alert and present, out of his deadly daze and all the way here with Jonny. There's no state of emergency to distract Jon anymore, and he's feeling painfully aware that this is not only the first time in his life that he's woken up with somebody - it's also, technically, the first time he's been all the way naked plus alone plus lying down with another person, ever. 

Jon just lets people assume that he's done more than he has, gone further than mostly-clothed heavy makeouts and dry humping, handjobs and a couple of half-assed blowjobs. He doesn't really know why he hasn't, yet. He doesn't think he'd have much trouble sealing the deal, if he tried: he's tall and athletic, known around school as a leader, not like prom-king popular but guys respect him, and no matter what Kaner says he's not _completely_ hopeless around the face. But he's scared to ruin his future by knocking up some random, and he also suspects he'd be the type to take even casual hookups more seriously than appropriate: he does that, gets kind of intense about things. His buddies on the team, in the locker room, they sure talk like they think Jon's been there already, and he's had girls act like he's some big gentleman for not immediately trying to hit it and quit it, which feels like kind of a compliment and kind of an insult, simultaneously.

Jonny doesn't understand why that's on his mind _now,_ the stuff he has and hasn't done in parked cars and upstairs bedrooms at house parties. He tries to break the moment by knuckling Patrick's skull, companionable, but once again it just turns into sort of dragging his fingertips through Pat's curls, nails scratching against his scalp, and just like that Pat's eyes close, his mouth opens. If he could he'd be purring, Jonny's pretty sure.

His left thigh is twinging where he's lying on it funny: the floor in here is just raw wood, knobbly and hard. Jonny shifts upwards, fingers tightening momentarily in Patrick's hair, and Patrick's face goes so suddenly and drastically pale that it's as if all that hard-won body heat just drained right back out of him.

For a second Jon doesn't get it…until he registers the totally foreign, totally unmistakable sensation of someone else's dick going hard against his thigh. Like, it's nothing he's ever felt before, not from this side, but it turns out that it can't really be mistaken for anything else in the world. 

"Uh," Patrick says after the world's longest silence. His hips jerk away, far too late. "Sorry, man."

Jon's cheeks are flaming, he can feel it, but he manages: "No, hey, that's - a good sign, right, your…circulation is back? To normal." Oh, god, implying that Kaner popping boners on him is _normal?_ "Or whatever." 

Which, great, now he's actively thinking about the insistent beat of blood in Kaner's cock where it was just sliding along Jon's pelvic crease, like, twenty seconds ago - and worse, Kaner must _know_ he's thinking about that. And worst of all, now Jonny's starting to stiffen up himself like some kind of sympathetic response, and the way his dick curves up when it's hard means Kaner's definitely, definitely gonna notice in about three, two, one -

The tense, almost frightened crease of Pat's forehead suddenly eases up, all at once. "Oh," he says, breath sucking in quick, surprised, and then again, differently inflected: "Oh." 

Jonny immediately casts his gaze down, determinedly avoiding eye contact. That's not any better, though, because now instead he's got this great porn-camera angle of their lower bodies, monochrome outlines in the dim glow of that little bit of moonlight leaking in, and getting even the slightest glimpse of their respective hard-ons inches apart down under the blankets just about kills Jonny.

He lifts his head and forces himself to look at Kaner's face properly, difficult as any time he's ever had to swallow a tough loss and stare some opposing captain in the eye and admit, _Good game._

What he gets back is Pat's familiar face all heavy-lidded, narrow-eyed: not hostile, just thoughtful, processing.

"I dunno," Kaner says eventually. One corner of his mouth is twitching, dimple visible. "I think I might still have some, like, frostbite going on. Down there. Maybe you better check." 

Jonny gapes at him, more distressed by that line than any other part of this entire situation. "Nice game you got there, buddy," he says, a little strangled. "Jesus."

"Whatever, like it isn't working," Kaner says, full-on grinning now, pressing close again so Jonny really gets a load of that long line of heat pushing against the meat of his thigh. 

All at once an obvious reason for this insanity occurs to him. "You're probably not thinking straight yet," he says desperately (which just earns him a slightly hysterical snicker from Kaner at the word _straight._ ) "You're probably just still out of it -"

"Blame it on the brush with death," Kaner agrees. He's totally laughing at Jonny, which should by all rights be an enormous bonerkill but isn't, somehow, not on the delighted red curve of that mouth. 

It's the second time in the last six hours that Jonny's seriously considered kissing him. Just the once could have been an adrenaline-induced anomaly, no sweat, but twice… 

"Which, actually." Kaner's tongue darts out over those lips, sly and serpentine, like he knows exactly what Jonny's thinking. Maybe he does, fuck - maybe Jonny is just that obvious. "I could probably also use a little bit of mouth-to-mouth -"

"Oh my god," Jonny groans, "stop _talking,"_ and elbows Kaner sharply in the side. Business as usual, except the extra motion brings their bodies, their faces, so near together that he just about feels it when that same corner of Kaner's mouth turns up in a smile.

Kaner's voice comes back soft and suggestive, heavy-laden with it. "Why don't you make me."

Jon would only have to bend his head an inch, no more, to shut Pat up good and proper with his tongue down his throat. But for an endless moment he stays frozen, breath stolen, like it's him back there, lost in the darkness underwater. 

He thinks again, helplessly, _god, you asshole, I'm so fucking happy you made it -_ and that's what breaks the ice, gets his arms moving all on their own, hands coming up to cup Pat's little heart-shaped face in between his palms. It makes Pat list impossibly further in, his own fingers catching at both of Jonny's wrists and wrapping around, nails digging in too hard, like some weird rough variation on holding hands…and then he's actually fucking going for it, tilting Jonny's chin up with gentle fingertips like Jonny's some post-prom virgin who needs lots of sweet kisses before he'll put out. 

Even more awful: Jonny sure as hell wants the sweet kisses, and he's pretty sure he wants to put out, too.

Kaner makes out just exactly like Jonny's seen him do with girls a time or two, all crude messy licking in-in-in, so blatantly eager and enthusiastic that it's a little gross and a lot endearing. When he says, low, "But for real though, can I get some more of that massage action? Really get the blood going, you know," Jonny can _taste_ the sleazy smirk that goes with it.

He can also tell exactly how hard Kaner is, nudging insistently along the cut of his abs. "Pretty goddamn clear you aren't having any issues with blood flow," he scoffs, and - perversely delighted to have found this new way of winding Kaner up - he punctuates it with a sharp little bite to Kaner's bottom lip. 

Kaner moans outright, and Jonny reflexively hisses, "Shh."

Kaner pulls back enough to look at him like he's crazy, at which point Jonny remembers how remote their location is: Kaner could be screeching like a pornstar and there'd be nobody to hear but the two of them. 

"Right," he says, rubbing sheepishly at his (red, no doubt) nose. "Used to the dorms."

"If a tree falls in the woods…" says Kaner, and goes in for his mouth again. Jonny slides one hand back, curls it in the soft fuzz at the nape of Kaner's neck, and now Kaner's hips are working in earnest, twisting and shoving forward.

It's so _quiet_ in here, nothing to hear but the sound of their breathing, meshed gasps leaking out around the dirty wet noises of their tongues sliding together. Jon has the impression of being blanketed not just by the scratchy wool wrapped around their bodies but also by the snow muffling their little shelter, by the vast silence of the forest. That sensation of safety, of secrecy, maybe that's what gives him the courage to slip his other hand down in between Patrick's legs.

"Aw, fuck, yeah," Pat says, tearing his lips away from Jonny's as his head droops back, his eyes drop shut. "C'mon, c'mon, jerk it."

Jonny's glad for the dark that, hopefully, camouflages his flaming cheeks. Although Patrick doesn't look in much shape to notice. He's all over the place, hands moving convulsively to clutch at the blanket where it's wrapped over Jonny's shoulder, mouth open and working like he wants something in it. Jonny can feel Patrick's fucking _pulse_ in his hard dick where he's fisting it, Patrick's heart pounding a split second off-beat from his own, vibrantly alive.

He's still trying to get his head around the idea of giving Kaner - Kaner! - a thanks-for-not-dying handy when Kaner mumbles something indistinct - _lemme do you too_ , it might be, Jon can't really hear over the rush in his ears - and gets his own hand sandwiched down in between their rolling hips. Jonny inhales in surprise as their fists bump, knuckles scraping roughly together, rhythms clashing for just a couple of seconds before falling into perfect step with each other. The longer he and Kaner have known one another, the better physically attuned they've become, and they make magic together on the ice that way…but Jon sure never expected that it'd also hold true _here._

Patrick makes an impatient noise into the sensitive skin of Jonny's throat, brings his hand back up and spits sloppily into his palm before jamming it right back down where it was. He gives Jonny a few more strokes, mouthing tentatively along Jonny's neck and jawline. The slide of skin on skin is just about as smooth as hooking up with girls - neither of them can grow facial hair for shit yet, honestly - and Jonny shudders.

"Y'alright?" Pat mutters, drawing away enough to give him a slightly uncertain half-smile. "Cold?"

"Huh?" Jonny manages. He isn't, not remotely; between his throbbing dick, and the palpable blush spreading down his neck to his chest, and the acres of skin he's got pressed full-frontal to Patrick's, he's fucking burning up.

"Now _you're_ shivering," Pat explains, brow wrinkled in concern.

"Uh -"

Jon can see the exact moment when Patrick realizes that he's not trembling from the chill, just from an unsettlingly potent combination of horniness and panic...and he's never loved the dude more than in the also clearly visible moment when Patrick opts not to call him out on it, just squeezes Jonny's arm and goes in for his mouth again. 

Pat's breath is coming out all heavy and overwrought, so different from the frail whistle of it before, and Jonny ducks in even further, draws it into his own lungs and gives it back again, in kisses so deep it's like he's trying to take long rich swallows of Pat's life itself.

Pat arcs his spine and rubs one foot up the back of Jonny's calf; makes another frustrated noise and abruptly releases Jonny's dick, withdraws his mouth to say, "Hey, hey, lemme go, get your hand outta there." 

Jonny yanks his fingers back like they've been burned, and Patrick must taste the appalled _sorry, fuck, sorry_ forming on his lips, because he adds in a rush: "No no no, I mean, I just wanna -" before he gives up on words and just rolls on top of Jonny, grinding down with all his weight. 

Jonny hadn't been prepared for the power behind the jerk of his hips, the force traveling out from his strong core muscles to drive his cock up alongside Jonny's own, hard as a rock and scraping up all of Jonny's tender parts with that absurd ginger pubic hair. Which - Jonny has a swift flash of insight as to why he was having so much trouble looking at Pat's armpits earlier, and his cheeks grow warmer yet. 

Above him Patrick's face is as focused as it ever looks on ice, lip bitten bloodless and eyes burning like blue flame. Jon has to shut his eyes against it, but his mouth goes questing clumsily for Patrick's again anyway - all on its own, it feels like, as if kissing were as involuntary as breathing. He finds it, latches on, surging up to suck on Pat's tongue, and that alters the angle of his thrusts so that his dick's pushing into the soft blood-hot give underneath Pat's balls, like he's trying to fuck a girl. Just a little farther back - it wouldn't take much - and it'd be like trying to, you know. Fuck a guy.

That thought pushes him close enough to coming that his leg kicks out compulsively and gets the cover tangled up all wrong, and Patrick moans in a much less pleased way as it falls open and exposes naked skin to the freezing air. Jonny, for his part, is plenty fucking warm underneath him like this, and he just snickers at Pat's distressed little vocalizations as Pat's hands scrabble to re-cover them. He's never heard his own laugh on the cusp of orgasm, before, and it's - sort of a nice sound. Not _dignified_ exactly, but nice. 

"Oh, _now_ it's funny when I'm cold," Patrick bitches, but he's breathless as hell, too.

Jonny nudges blindly at his cheek, tasting the salt there, sweat or tears. There's this nameless feeling welling up in the pit of his stomach, frantic and intense, and he can only wonder dazedly if it's always like this when you get all the way undressed and horizontal with another person, or if it's just that -

 _My body saved your body,_ he thinks out of nowhere, and just like that he's coming between Pat's thighs.

The friction between them immediately turns into the wettest, dirtiest rub imaginable, and it's just as well that Jon is kissing Pat so goddamn hard, because at least it smothers the no doubt humiliating sobbing noises he'd have been making through those last few pulses otherwise.

Pat's eyelashes flutter against Jon's cheekbone, a delicate tickle over the heated skin there. "Ah, jeez," Pat's gasping out, "your come-face is amazing," and - also for the first time - Jonny gets to hear what someone _else's_ laugh sounds like on the very edge of orgasm.

Patrick's arms give out halfway through and he all but collapses onto Jonny's chest, panting right up against Jonny's lips in a way that's almost hotter than actual kissing. His hips shove forward violently a couple more times, the rub of their torsos smearing Jonny up from thigh to nipple, and it's fucking nasty, or should be - but when he gives Jonny his slick hot mouth on top of the slick heat everyplace else Jonny just shuts his eyes tight and gets lost in it, the animal warmth of it, flesh on flesh.

Yesterday, Jonny didn't even know how that felt. Now he knows: there's nothing more vital, more alive.

-

They come down together like they're fresh off the penalty kill, heaving and panting, wordless. It's all Jonny can do to bite down on a satisfied post-coital sigh, _oh my god,_ because that seems like it'd make it obvious that what just happened was about as close as he's gotten yet to actually punching his v-card for real. With - with fucking _Kaner_ , christ. Unbelievable.

The pale gray light of dawn is just beginning to slant into their shelter, illuminating it a little better, and for the first time tonight - today? - Jonny gets a clear look at Pat's mouth and is startled by the state it's in, ravaged-looking, all reddened and swollen from so much making out. _Jon_ made that happen, what the fuck. He doesn't think he's spent that much time and enthusiasm kissing anyone since back in junior high, when first base was as far as you were likely to get.

His gaze slips downward again and that's a shocking sight as well: exactly how fucking sloppy they both are. He and Kaner see each other naked and covered in bodily fluids on the regular, but it's different when it's the mess of their mingled come between them, so fresh it's still hot.

"Wow," Kaner says, low. He's looking, too. "Damn." He trails one finger - poking, a little bit provoking - over Jonny's filthy stomach. "Good _morning."_

Jon doesn't think he's up to full sentences just yet, so he opts to keep his mouth shut. He does kinda want to sink his teeth into Patrick's abused lower lip just one more time, but maybe that'd be weird now that they're all finished with…with what he and Patrick just did.

Patrick's hands keep running sporadically over Jon's body, touch less tender or intentional than simply curious, exploratory. It's strange to think about, Kaner tracing those same exact muscles that they've spent countless hours working on together, eyeing them up critically in the gym mirrors as they discuss ideal protein-to-carb ratio, body fat percentage, lifting vs. cardio. 

Jon clears his throat, ready to risk speech now. "Getting light out," is what he says, unnecessarily. 

He can feel Kaner nod against his shoulder. "Probably oughta get going soon. Before they call in the Mounties, or whoever it is you got up here."

Jonny glances over at their clothes again. "Think our stuff's dry enough yet?"

"Can't put 'em back on like this," Kaner points out, and Jonny watches in disturbed fascination as Kaner drags a fingertip through a splash of come way high up on Jonny's pec that - judging by the angle - Kaner himself must've put there. 

"Cleanup time," he agrees, and Kaner reaches for a loose fold of their blanket. 

"Just use, like, a corner of it," Jonny adds. "I wanna save the rest, use it to wrap your feet up for the trek back."

"I mean. You could still do that with jizz rags…" Kaner cracks up at the face Jonny's pulling. "Okay, yeah, maybe not."

"Fucking hike of shame," Jonny mutters. The idea of stumbling back in the door of Sharpy's parents' cabin full of bros with Kaner wearing their combined come is horrifying. And also a tiny bit hot to him, which is equally horrifying. "Can you just, like, tear off a piece? Gonna have to rip it up for your feet anyway."

Pat tries, fails, bitches about the wool being too tough and his hands being too precious or what the fuck ever, and sulkily turns the attempt over to Jonny, who tries, fails, frowns, and then spots a rusty old skinning knife sitting amidst all the other crud along the far wall. He leans over, way the fuck out of their protective covering, braving the cold air on his bare skin and trying to arch his body so as not to get spunk all over anything _else_ as he stretches to get ahold of it. 

When he turns back in with it clutched triumphantly in his hand, Kaner is staring at the place where his ass just was, where Jonny was stretched out on hands and knees: more or less assuming the position, he realizes with the reddest, hottest, worst blush yet. Kaner's lips are parted and he's got one hand on his own junk, adjusting himself, though he drops it quickly when he sees Jonny looking back.

Jonny ducks his head and focuses harder than necessary on hacking off a washcloth-sized chunk of material, mopping off his own semen-streaked abs. When he's done he thwacks the wadded-up ball into Kaner's still-dirty belly, then starts wrestling his own underwear back up his hips while trying not to watch Kaner swiping the cloth slowly over cold-hardened nipples. 

He feels sort of obscurely disappointed about getting dressed again. Not that he thought they were gonna screw around any more - no matter how Kaner might've been ogling his ass just now - but just, it was nice being in so close together, all warm naked skin with nothing in between. Hell, he realizes with faint astonishment, that must be half the appeal of real sex right there. 

When Jon's mother (and ugh, god, why's he thinking of _that_?) has to refer to sex stuff in her sons' presence, she calls it _être intime_ : being intimate with someone. Jon's always thought that was the cheesiest goddamn euphemism on the planet, but he's sort of getting it now. 

"Yo, any time now," Kaner grouses. He's back in his clothes now as well, though his feet are still bare, looking terribly vulnerable in contrast. Jonny thinks regretfully of his boots lost in the lake, their skis abandoned on the shore and now surely buried under some anonymous snowdrift, and then bends his head to the task of cutting the remainder of the blanket into strips.

Kaner's hoisted himself up to sit on a flipped-over crate, and Jonny crouches down in front of it, acutely aware of Kaner's eyes on him as he lifts one of Kaner's ankles in his hands and starts tying the strips around his foot, trying to layer them into a makeshift boot that extends most of the way up Kaner's calf - that snow out there's pretty deep. 

"Looks like mummy wrappings," Kaner says, still watching.

"Just hope it holds up." Jon squints doubtfully at the knot he's tugging snug. "I don't wanna do it too tight, cut off the circulation." 

He recalls their last exchange re: Kaner's circulation, remembers his current position kneeling between Kaner's knees like this, and attempts to will back his imminent flush. Again.

"Nah, that feels alright." Pat wiggles his thickly swaddled toes. "Not a fan of the fashion statement, but hey."

Jonny rolls his eyes. Kaner is kind of a shoe addict - every semester he brings half a dozen pairs of his godawful sneakers and then proceeds to wear them around St Catharines campus in flagrant violation of the dress code - and Jonny lives to give him shit about his 'girly' obsession.

"Gonna suck to walk on," he warns.

"Well, worst comes to worst, you can piggyback me home," Pat suggests, cracking up at Jonny's unimpressed stare. "It'll be fine, Taze. It'll do the job, just has to last a couple hours."

Jonny finishes the other foot and straightens up. "Stand up, test 'em out."

"Solid," Pat proclaims after a few experimental strides around the cabin. "You ready?"

Jonny zips his coat up. "Yeah, let's go."

They emerge, blinking, into the daylight, and after a few paces Jon twists his head to look back at the shitty little shack, such an unlikely site for last night's drama of mortality and sensuality. It's as if overnight those four walls and a roof had held some bizarre alternate dimension in which it felt good and right and natural to lie down with Patrick and…well.

Patrick's looking back, too. 

"Some ski trip," he says, with feeling.

"Yeah." Jonny blows out a breath, wondering if they're actually gonna talk about it. _It_ it. Hopefully not, or this is gonna be one awkward-ass hike back. "Sorry about that. My idea, and all."

"Ehh," says Kaner cheerfully, "at least it'll make one hell of a story -" 

He breaks off with a cough, and Jonny knows they're both thinking the same thing: before they can share it with their boys, this story's gonna need one hundred percent less nude cuddling…let alone what accidentally came after.

"- with a little editing," Pat finishes, strangled. 

"Lot of editing," Jonny agrees fervently.

It occurs to him, belated and distant, that this is probably going to be the single biggest thing they've ever trusted each other with. Kaner is not what most people would consider a rock of steadiness and integrity, but Jon finds that he's surprisingly undisturbed by the idea: this weighty secret they'll always share, now.

"Still," Pat says after an awkward moment of silence, "coulda been worse."

For a minute Jonny thinks he means the hooking up, and his heart does this violent leap-sink thing in his chest, but then Patrick goes on: "I mean, y'know, like an actual injury. Broken leg or something, whatever. Coulda fucked up my season good."

Jon grimaces at the thought. Kaner's been having a killer season; he's starting to attract scouts to their games, college and pro both. He leads the team in points - even well ahead of Jonny himself, which gives Jonny this weird combination of annoyance and, like, pride by proxy. Losing him would've been a huge, huge blow to their chances. 

"Yeah, you got lucky," he says, and then wants to smack himself right in the face when Kaner catches the innuendo (of course he does) and fucking _winks_ at him.

"Coulda been worse," he repeats. This time he _is_ talking about the hooking up, Jonny's pretty sure.

They're already more or less in step where they're trudging through the drifts, but now Jon angles in just enough that when he drops his near hand to swing freely between them, his gloved knuckles bump against Patrick's. Just the once, at first, but when Kaner doesn't shift his wrist away Jon lets it happen again, again, until it's part of the natural swing of their arms on every step, halfway between a repetitive mini-fistbump and the world's subtlest version of handholding. 

He probably can't actually feel the warmth of Patrick's skin through his glove, but he imagines that he does. He doesn't dare turn his head to check for sure, but in his peripheral vision, he can kind of see how Patrick is smiling down at the snowy ground.

 _I got lucky, too,_ Jonny thinks, _so fucking lucky -_ and he doesn't even mean the hooking up at all.

**Author's Note:**

> original title on the word doc was **boom, icebreaker** which should tell you all you need to know about the peril du jour. 
> 
> epigraph from Carol Ann Duffy's poem "Snow", title from an appropriately mushy lovesong by Vanessa Carlton.
> 
> ([& soundtrack](http://8tracks.com/longtime_lurker/ibtetkyw))


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